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Mental health disorders are among the leading worldwide causes of disease and long-term disability. This issue has a long and painful history of gradual de-stigmatization of patients, coinciding with humanization of therapeutic approaches. What are the current trends in Russia regarding this issue and in what ways is it similar to and different from Western countries? IQ.HSE provides an overview of this problem based on research carried out by Svetlana Kolpakova.

On September 5, Laurie Manchester, Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University, presented her paper on voluntary repatriation of Russians from China to the Soviet Union between 1935 and 1960. The presentation was part of the research seminar, ‘Boundaries of History’, held regularly by the Department of History at HSE University in St. Petersburg. HSE News Service spoke with Laurie Manchester about her research interests, collaborating with HSE faculty members, and the latest workshop.

Dr. Sabyasachi Tripathi, from Kolkata, India, is a new research fellow at HSE University. He will be working at the Laboratory for Science and Technology Studies of the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge.

In the following study a microeconomic assessment of the implementation results of tax and financial policies aimed at stimulating firms’ innovation tivity is carried out. The approach used is based on the provisions of the additionality concept. The authors systematized and summarized the results of more than thirty empirical studies examining the additionality effects of tax and financial incentives for innovation. Obtained results suggest that financial support more often leads to significant positive results, mainly to the growth of company’s investment in new equipment, the increase in the production volume of innovative products and the acceleration of projects' implementation. However, the use of tax instruments is much less likely to crowd out private investment. Generally, public support rather poorly stimulates the development of the science-business cooperation.

In recent years R&D tax incentives have been characterized by increasing scale and spread on innovation activity. Approaches to integrated R&D tax incentives into "recipes" for long-term growth and competitiveness were developed and tested in many countries. For exam-ple, only 12 OECD members employed R&D tax incentives in 1995, but 27 members do so in 2013 (as well as Brazil, China, India, Russia and other countries). And their share of total government expenditure on R&D (direct and tax) by OECD member countries reached at least a third. These trends have accompanied the development and testing of approaches to estimate the costs of tax support for R&D (including tax expenditures) and its effects and to ensure that they are internationally compatible. As for Russia, there are no officially accepted estimates of the scale and effectiveness of R&D and innovation tax support yet, though efforts to calculate them have been under way since 2010. This paper includes the current state of empirical research of tax support for R&D and in-novation in the Russian Federation, as well as a survey of the demand for its tools from research institutes, universities performing R&D, and manufacturing enterprises, which was conducted in 2012-2013. The results obtained demonstrate the power of empirical analysis and optimization of R&D and innovation tax incentives in the Russian Federation, against the background of the field's best practices and current trends.

The paper examines the institute of minimum wage in developed and transition economies and in a number of the developing countries. First of all the institutional mechanism of minimum wage fixing is considered. One of the sections explores the dynamics of absolute and relative levels of minimum wage. The special attention is paid to the impact of the institute of minimum wage on the labour market. The author considers the mechanism of transmission of the minimum wage increases on the employment and unemployment dynamics. The paper also contains the result of the empirical research. The experience of many countries witnesses that large increases in minimum wage levels lead to the stagnation of the employ-ment, especially of the disadvantaged groups. The negative effect is larger for the companies with higher share of labour costs and more active use of unqualified labour, that is small businesses and agricultural enterprises. One of the main conclusions is that the minimum wage is not an effective tool of the poverty reduction as the majority of the recipients live in households of average and upper average income.